Mija
by sinemoras09
Summary: Five scenes where Beth gets used to living with her father. Gen. No spoilers.


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**1\. Arms**

"Jerry, what the fuck, did you take all the Tapatio?"

Rick slams the refrigerator shut. Jerry leans against the kitchen doorway, smiling smugly.

"Sorry, Rick," Jerry says. "You know I like things..._muy amante_."

"It's 'picante,' you fucking idiot. Why'd you take my hot sauce?"

Jerry crosses his arms. "Rick, this is my house. My refrigerator. If you have a problem with it, you can keep your stupid hot sauce elsewhere."

"Jesus fucking..." Rick runs his hand through his hair.

xXx

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"Dad," Beth says, slowly. "What's with the scanner in the refrigerator?"

The camera roves, a spherical eye not unlike something from a science fiction horror movie. The sensor emits a red laser which falls over Beth's body like a fishnet. Rick sniffs, irritated.

"Because that dipshit keeps getting into my stuff," Rick says. "W-w-what the fuck am I supposed to do? He got into alien bacteria, Beth. He drank my globaflyn. And need I remind you, he fucking used up all the hot sauce!"

"Dad! I told you already, no booby traps inside the house!" Beth moves to disassemble it, but Rick catches her by the arm.

"Sweetie, y-y-you're gonna get zapped by about a billion volts of electricity if you touch that. And it's very safe, I programmed it to only target Jerry."

"You just said touching it would electrocute me, Dad! That's hardly the definition of 'safe.'"

"Sweetie, it is safe. I-i-it'll only electrocute you if you try messing with it."

The house slowly gets taken over by inventions. The curtains are reinforced with blast doors; kill bots patrol the periphery while a scifi security system arms the house.

"Sweetie, this is important. This is the code to launch the rockets-"

Beth says in alarm, "Why the hell would I want to launch rockets?!"

Rick spreads his hands.

"I-I mean, I could program lasers too, if you'd rather."

xXx

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**2\. Cot**

She always gets a pang of guilt whenever she passes by the cot in her dad's bedroom.

"Sweetie, it's okay. I-I-I don't really sleep that much, anyway."

"Dad, that cot can barely fit you." Beth has an image of her lean and wiry father, all six-foot four inches of him crammed uncomfortably on the flimsy cot when he goes to bed. "They're selling sofa couches at that furniture place on clearance. Why don't we go pick you out one?"

"Eh," Rick says, and Beth has the urge to argue with him, because people sleeping on cots is a temporary thing, whereas people sleeping on beds is more permanent.

Rick's room is actually a walk-in storage closet: before he moved in, the room was piled with boxes stacked up to the ceiling, broken coat racks and old tennis shoes tossed in there, carelessly. The room isn't as cramped, now - other than the cot and a rickety old TV, the room is practically empty.

She catches him napping on the bench in the garage, and that worried nagging feeling rises up again.

"Dad?"

Rick groggily lifts his head. "Huh?"

"Dad, it's cold outside. Why don't you come in the house." She frowns at the red broken bulbs, the laser arms and the piles of ash and broken glass around him.

Rick sighs. "I-I'm just resting my eyes. It's okay, sweetie."

Beth bites her lip, worried. "Are you sure?" Her dad nods tiredly.

"Y-yeah, sweetie, I'm sure."

It's always like this: instead of the cot, she'll find Rick passed out in his spaceship or sprawled out in front of the TV, sleeping on the couch, a pile of empty beer bottles surrounding him.

It's nighttime when Jerry calls, "Beth! Your father is passed out in the kitchen again."

Beth sighs. He's either passed out from another alcoholic binge or else he's run himself ragged from another adventure again.

"Dad?" She touches him on the shoulder, only slightly surprised at how bony it feels beneath the lab coat. "Dad? Do you need help getting to bed?"

Rick grumbles something nonsensical, then staggers to his feet, leaning on her arm. She rests a hand between his shoulder blades to steady him, and frowns at how pronounced the bumps of his spine are in his back.

He drops heavily onto the cot, face-first and the cot creaking with his weight. For a moment, his legs dangle off the edge before he turns on his side and drunkenly curls up into himself, the bony angles of his body stretching the fabric of his rumpled lab coat. The light from the hallway cuts a yellow rectangle against his body, and Beth can see the dark bruises under his eyes.

He's asleep, and breathing deeply. Quietly Beth drapes a thin blanket over him, then shuts the door without making a sound.

xXx

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She gets him a down comforter, because at the very least her father needs something warm.

"Sweetie, did you... did you get this for me?" Rick holds the blanket carefully, like it's something precious and fragile.

"Yeah Dad, you know. All you have is that shitty blanket. I thought I'd get you something warm."

He wraps the blanket around himself. Once, twice, and then grins up at her like a kid on Christmas. "Aww," he says. "Thanks, sweetie."

Beth makes a move to hug him, but then stops herself, awkwardly.

"Yeah, Dad," she says instead. "No problem."

xXx

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**3\. Grandkids**

Rick bitches about spending time with his grandkids. The stuff Summer watches is boring as shit, and board games were made exclusively for idiots.

But Beth will walk into the kitchen and see Rick thumbing through the rules for _Downbeat_, sitting at the kitchen table while Summer throws dice and Morty takes his turn.

"I thought you didn't like board games?" Beth pours herself a cup of coffee while Summer rolls the dice, then slaps the center of the board, "Downbeat!"

"I don't," Rick says. To Summer, he asks, "How the fuck do you play this again?"

"Grandpa Rick, we've been playing for an hour, how do you not know?"

"Because this is stupid, and I don't want to waste the brain space."

Beth smiles to herself, then takes a sip of her coffee.

(He does a lot of things he claims he hates doing - watching trashy TV with Summer, spending the afternoon in the passenger's seat teaching Morty. On occasion he whisks off his grandkids to other dimensions to get ice cream. "I don't see why," Jerry says, frowning. "There's nothing better than Cold Stone Creamery.")

xXx

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**4\. Drunk**

One night, the spaceship crash-lands into the deck of their backyard.

"Dad!" Beth runs. Rick staggers outside and vomits violently, falling on his hands and knees.

The lights flick on in the house. Beth pulls her dad up, keeping one hand on his chest while her other hand grips his arm.

Jerry is standing in the livingroom. "Beth-"

"Jerry not now." Beth slings Rick's arm over her shoulder and helps him to his room.

She dumps her dad onto the cot. Rick groans and turns, pulling his knees to his chest. He smells like sweat and alcohol, and the side of his temple is caked with old, dried blood.

"Dad. What the hell happened to you?"

"Too loud." Rick's hand flutters by his face. "Got in a _urrrp_ bar fight with another Rick. Oh God, my head." He winces. "Sweetie, can you, can you turn out the lights? Ugh, shit. I'm sorry. I-I-I think I puked on the lawn."

Beth turns off the switch, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the sudden grayscale of the room.

Beth sits and waits at the edge of the cot. After he falls asleep, she goes outside.

She turns on the hose and hoses down the lawn, then pushes open the cracked door of his spaceship to grab his flask and his portal gun. It's only when she's inside, sifting through the dozens of bottles and beer cans that she finds it: a tattered picture of her and her Mom, careworn and creased at the corners.

xXx

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It's the weekend, and Beth grunts as she rolls a doughy mixture of peanuts and sugar. She had a sudden craving for peanut candy, but the Mexican grocer had turned into a hipster coffee shop, so if she wanted it, she'd have to make it herself.

Rick walks into the kitchen. "Oh shit, is that mazapanes?" He leans over the counter as Beth rolls the dough into logs and slices them into thick circles.

"Yeah, Dad. I got a craving." Beth lines the baking sheet with parchment paper. "I also got some menudo from that Mexican place you like. You know, for your head," Beth says. Rick frowns.

"They're open this early?" Rick asks. Beth shakes her head.

"Dad, it's 4 PM. You've been passed out all morning."

Rick glances at the clock behind them. "Fuck."

"Yeah, no kidding."

Rick scratches his head. "Y-you know what's good for hangovers?" Rick leans on the counter. "Potassium. Fuckin' potassium chloride. Just forty milliequivalents of that shit'll knock out a hangover."

There's a warm silence. From the corner of her eye, Beth watches as her dad gulps down a glass of water. His adam's apple bobs, and the skin of his face and neck is covered with day-old stubble.

"Dad, you look like shit," Beth says. Rick grins.

"You shoulda seen the other Rick."

Beth snorts. Rick bends over the sink, opening the tap to get more water, and Beth can't help but notice how thin his wrists have gotten. The callouses on his hands seem more pronounced somehow, and she can see the lines of old pale scars crisscrossing his knuckles.

There's a catch in her throat, because she wants to ask him - ask him why he left, why he stopped loving her Mom. But she doesn't. Questions like that are prickly, and her father is like a feral cat, ready to bolt at the nearest threat. It's enough that he's standing here with her, the lean comma of his body oddly comforting. She spoons out bowls of soup and tastes a piece of candy, and wordlessly they sit down to eat at the kitchen table together.

They eat in silence. The candy is sweet. The soup is salty and warm.

xXx

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**5\. Flu**

One day, she wakes up with the fucking flu.

"So does that mean we're having pizza for dinner?" Jerry says. Beth rolls away from him, groaning under the covers.

She quarantines herself on the couch - Jerry is a bitch when he's sick, she'd rather not have to deal with it. The house is dark and she's fairly sure the family is asleep, when she hears her dad quietly stepping around the corner.

"Hey," he says in a low voice, and he holds out a cup. "Take this."

Beth winces, then sits up. Her dad hands her a few capsules and a glass of water.

She takes a sip. "What is this?"

"I whipped up an antiviral. I-i-it's more potent than that tamiflu bullshit you got from the doctor."

Beth swallows the pills and makes a face. Rick sits down heavily beside her.

She feels like shit. Curling on her side, she rests her head on the middle couch cushion, since Rick is still sitting next to her and she can't stretch out. Rick turns on the TV - more interdimensional cable, but he lowers the sound.

Time passes. She drifts in and out of a hazy half-sleep, her eyes closing and opening at irregular intervals. It's only when her breathing deepens and she's about to fall asleep that she realizes her dad's hand has been resting gently on her head. He's staring at the TV, his eyes half-lidded and half-falling asleep, his fingers absently stroking the tangles of her scalp.

For a moment, it's like she's five years-old again. He smells like beer and warm leather, and he tucks his arm around her as she leans tiredly against his chest.

The light from the TV flickers. He laughs softly at a stupid commercial about hamsters living in people's butts, and Beth smiles a little, scooting closer.


End file.
